No, I'm not. The ZVM and the ZVW have been marketed more than one year ago. I am stating about the current crop of products.

HDDs have no advantages over flash players. They are for the time being available in higher capacities and relatively low costs, but that is simply a matter of time. The tech of flash memory is far beyond HDDs. its smaller, saves battery, and its more durable. Geez, wonder why creative chooses to go for that -.-*

There is btw a harddisk version of the Zen. Its called ZVM. Its still a good player, so if you cont like flash, go buy that one instead.

old technology(HDD)....bad, new technology(flash) GOOOOOD!
get with the program musichound

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Are you serious? More durable. Meaning drop the damn thing and it will still work? Plus the ability to carry various media on cards, thereby expanding the capacity to no limits?

Im..Im....Wow.

You cant be serious, can you?

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NAND flash devices are solid-state memories with no moving parts, how can you prefer a mechanical system consisting of a spinning platter…

All I am trying to state is manufacturers are marketing players with lower capacities at a higher price. Sure they ae more durable, but IMO there is nothing like carrying your entire music collection arount. IMO a PMP should sport at least 60GB.

Once flash based players come down to the same price and reach the same capacity as hard drive based players, it is only then that I would cosider them to be a smart purchase.

No, I'm not. The ZVM and the ZVW have been marketed more than one year ago. I am stating about the current crop of products.

As I see it, the new Zen does exactly the same things as the ZVM and ZVW. So just because they're "not new" you think they're inferior to the new Zen?

Creative already made the players you seem to favor, why go bashing the new flash-based version if everything you need exists already?

Sheesh, dude... I for one would be glad if all HDDs would be wiped off the earth. No more moving parts, no more inevitable long-time damage, much speedier access, much smaller form factor, etc, etc, ...

This is so incredibly braindead, I'm (almost) lost for words. Creative's higher-capacity HDD-based players support MPEG4, but for a lower-capacity flash-based player they use the worst, most ineffective codec ever, converting a 100MB MPEG4 file to a 500MB MJPEG file...

BTW - WMV9 (which is natively supported) needs more processing power to decode than a comparable MPEG4-SP file...

All I am trying to state is manufacturers are marketing players with lower capacities at a higher price. Sure they ae more durable, but IMO there is nothing like carrying your entire music collection arount. IMO a PMP should sport at least 60GB.

Once flash based players come down to the same price and reach the same capacity as hard drive based players, it is only then that I would cosider them to be a smart purchase.

what's a better buy? Buying a player for a bit more money that will last just about as long as you want it to or buying a new lesser priced player everytime the hard drive decides to crap out on you. Not everyone has a 60gb library. I have 9.5gigs of music. A 16bg player ensures i'll have space for years to come. I don't need shitty video with me, just my music is fine. And i def. don't wanna have to worry about the HD giving me trouble. You sir, make NO sense. It's not marketing, it's common sense. The reason they are expensive, the tech is expensive. The reason the storage is lower, higher storage hasn't been developed. Unless you wanna spend 3,000 dollars on a 32gb compact flash card. Get a clue before you post please.

So far I owned two hard drive based players and I have never run into a problem with any of them. As long as they are taken care of they are quite durable and can withstand a lot of stress, as long as they are not dropped while they are queuing up music.

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You sir, make NO sense. It's not marketing, it's common sense. The reason they are expensive, the tech is expensive. The reason the storage is lower, higher storage hasn't been developed. Unless you wanna spend 3,000 dollars on a 32gb compact flash card. Get a clue before you post please.

This, sir, is an unneeded remark and is not called for in this forum. While you might not agree with my opinion there are better ways to debate. Please use common courtesy in your future posts.

It does offer more space. Unlimited space. As you can fill as many cards as you want. With what you want. When you want.

True, but I equate this to using floppy disks to offload space on cramped storage devices. Don't get me wrong: the concept of flash based DAPs and PMPs is a good one, but I think at the present time it's still too expensive. For people who don't need the extra space and want to spend extra memory for a slightly more reliable option then it's a good choice now.